Marriage, Children, Key to Dem. and Repub. Winnings

Thu

Sep 28 2006

09:53 am

By: Les Jones

USA Today has done a fascinating study comparing party representation in Congressional districts with number of children and marriage rates. There's lots of good information in the article, and the chart below shows one astounding correlation. Republicans control the 25 Congressional districts with the highest marriage rate, while Democrats control the 25 Congressional districts with the lowest marriage rates.

Highest percentage married

Rank	District	Party	Representative	Married

1	Ga. 7	Rep.	John Linder	66.1%

2	Tenn. 7	Rep.	Marsha Blackburn	65.3%

3	Ga. 6	Rep.	Tom Price	65.0%

4	Colo. 6	Rep.	Tom Tancredo	64.8%

5	N.J. 5	Rep.	Scott Garrett	64.0%

6	Va. 10	Rep.	Frank Wolf	63.8%

7	Ill. 13	Rep.	Judy Biggert	63.8%

8	Fla. 5	Rep.	Ginny Brown-Waite	63.5%

9	Ill. 10	Rep.	Mark Kirk	63.4%

10	N.J. 11	Rep.	Rodney Frelinghuysen	63.4%

11	Ga. 10	Rep.	Nathan Deal	63.2%

12	Mo. 2	Rep.	Todd Akin	63.0%

13	Va. 11	Rep.	Tom Davis	63.0%

14	Texas 31	Rep.	John Carter	62.9%

15	Neb. 3	Rep.	Tom Osborne	62.4%

16	Ky. 5	Rep.	Hal Rogers	62.3%

17	Texas 11	Rep.	Mike Conaway	62.2%

18	Ala. 6	Rep.	Spencer Bachus	62.2%

19	Ind. 5	Rep.	Dan Burton	62.1%

20	Ala. 4	Rep.	Robert Aderholt	62.1%

21	N.Y. 3	Rep.	Pete King	62.1%

22	Utah 3	Rep.	Chris Cannon	62.1%

23	N.J. 7	Rep.	Mike Ferguson	62.0%

24	Wash. 8	Rep	Dave Reichert	62.0%

25	Ga. 8	Rep.	Lynn Westmoreland	61.9%

Lowest percentage married

Rank	District	Party	Representative	Married

412	Fla. 23	Dem.	Alcee Hastings	43.5%

413	Minn. 5	Dem.	Martin Olav Sabo	43.4%

414	Fla. 17	Dem.	Kendrick Meek	43.3%

415	N.J. 10	Dem.	Donald Payne	42.9%

416	N.Y. 11	Dem.	Major Owens	42.6%

417	Ill. 2	Dem.	Jesse Jackson Jr.	42.4%

418	Ohio 11	Dem.	Stephanie Tubbs Jones	42.1%

419	Ill. 1	Dem.	Bobby Rush	42.0%

420	Calif. 53	Dem.	Susan Davis	41.4%

421	Calif. 33	Dem.	Diane Watson	41.3%

422	Mich. 14	Dem.	John Conyers	41.1%

423	Calif. 8	Dem.	Nancy Pelosi	40.9%

424	Tenn. 9	Dem.	Harold Ford	40.8%

425	Ill. 7	Dem.	Danny Davis	40.5%

426	N.Y. 10	Dem.	Edolphus Towns	40.5%

427	La. 2	Dem.	William Jefferson	39.7%

428	N.Y. 15	Dem.	Charles Rangel	38.9%

429	Wis. 4	Dem.	Gwen Moore	38.4%

430	N.Y. 16	Dem.	Jos Serrano	38.3%

431	Mich. 13	Dem.	Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick	37.4%

432	Ga. 5	Dem.	John Lewis	37.3%

433	Mass. 8	Dem.	Michael Capuano	37.2%

434	Pa. 1	Dem.	Robert Brady	36.2%

435	Pa. 2	Dem.	Chaka Fattah	35.9%

436	D.C. *	Dem.	Eleanor Holmes Norton	34.5%

Source: USA TODAY analysis of Census Bureau data

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Assumptions: The upper and

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 10:28am.

Assumptions:

The upper and lower 5% are representative of the whole.

There's nothing else that would account for the phenomenon (urban vs. suburban vs. rural, how gerrymandered their district is, whether or not the state was free or slave in the 1800s, age of population, divorce rate, likelihood for a woman to represent the district, voter turnout per precinct, aggregate tendency to cry in movies, species of butterflies present in the month of July, number of McDonalds franchises per square mile).

That USA Today was rigorous in their analysis.

____________________________

On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning. --H. Thoreau

Fascinating

Submitted by Les Jones on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 11:02am.

There's some potentially useful information up above. You two are attacking it as if it's threatening to you in some way. Why is that?

Hey, Les, why don't we just call each other assholes and get it over with. - Somebody on the old Southknoxbubba.net (if that was you, claim your quote and win net.fame!)

I'm not attacking it per se.

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 11:22am.

I'm not attacking it per se. I'm attacking your representation of it.

What's particularly useful about that info? Look, both Metulj and I are doing our part. We're both married. We're both capable of having offspring. I even live in Marsha Blackburn's district, and my wife and I are both registered Democrats.

So f'ing what?

I think the question that I'd like to have answered is, "What's your malfunction?" Why do you seemingly obsess over issues like marriage and birth as it relates to party affiliation? You've written a number of blog posts both here and at SKB about this whole [poorly founded] phenomenon. And despite being told over and over that you're promoting bad science in support of your case, you keep pressing the same issue like a knucklehead.

Why is that? What's your personal stake in the "values voter" mythology? Why the constant didactic stance here?

____________________________

On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning. --H. Thoreau

Andy:

Submitted by Les Jones on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 11:52am.

"What's particularly useful about that info?"

It's useful in predicting individual election contests. Did you catch this part:

Most serious Democratic challenges this fall are in Republican-controlled House districts that have lower marriage rates.

For example, the two seats most likely to switch from Republican to Democratic are Arizona's 8th District and Colorado's 7th District, according to the non-partisan National Journal. The districts — in which Republican incumbents are not seeking re-election — rank 251st and 307th respectively in marriage rates among the 435 districts.

It's useful in predicting overall trends - if more or less people get married it's likely to have an effect on party fortunes. Did you catch this part:

The marriage divide drew attention in the 2004 presidential race. President Bush beat John Kerry by 15 percentage points among married people and lost by 18 percentage points among unmarried people, according to an exit poll conducted by national news media organizations.

It helps explain some of the differences between the policies constituencies want from their representatives. Did you catch this part:

"Both sides are very pro-kids. They just express it in different ways," Brooks says. "Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don't have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids."

And I am interested in these questions in the big picture - what happens to a culture and a people who don't marry, and who don't have kids at replacement levels? How do you suppose that's going to work out in the long run? Make fun of it all you want, attribute it to partisan politics all you want, but in the grand sweep of history cultures come and cultures go. Like the dude said, permanence is the illusion of every age.

Hey, Les, why don't we just call each other assholes and get it over with. - Somebody on the old Southknoxbubba.net (if that was you, claim your quote and win net.fame!)

Les, It's because you're a

Submitted by SayUncle on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 12:08pm.

Les, It's because you're a big republican stupidhead. Thought that was obvious.

---
SayUncle
Can't we all just get a long gun?

But you ignore wide swaths

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 12:40pm.

But you ignore wide swaths of information relevant to the conclusions drawn.

A congressional district, e.g. is an arbitrary thing. Plus, it doesn't stay constant over time.

Just take TN-7 as one example -- Blackburn's district. It runs from southern-suburban Davidson county, makes a trek across middle and west Tennessee (avoiding Jackson) and steering right smack into eastern-suburban Shelby County.

Is that representative of something? Sure. Wealth. Her district includes Germantown, Franklin, Forest Hills... some of the richest areas in the state.

Then there's this quote: "Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don't have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids."

It is so rife with prejudice that it's impossible to take this seriously either on a sociological or even a journalistic level. I grew up in a Democratic household and I come from a family of six. It was me, my folks, and my three sisters in the house. It's patently offensive to me to say that Republicans are the most congenial to families, let alone that completely loaded bullshit about "traditional" families. I know plenty of traditional Republican arrangements where there are 2.1 kids and a dog, the wife has a serious chemical addiction, the husband is absent at "work" much of the time, and screws around with some goomah on the side.

I grew up in a Democratic household, my parents were divorced but both remarried, they went to all my baseball games and school plays, fed me my veggies, they had children that they all loved, they took care of my scraped knees and the croup, they made sure all of my cavities were filled and that my teeth were straight, they were with me through the difficult years, and they encouraged me to grow up, get married, have children of my own, and to vote Democratic. They struggled with taxes but paid them, they worked very hard to keep food on the table, they had strong convictions about how they should live their lives and how I should live mine. My dad taught me photography and encouraged me to play guitar and to love nature and took me and my sister on long vacations every year. My mom did cross-stitch and embroidery, she worked with Campfire and DCFS as a volunteer, and she went to every one of my parent-teacher conferences with my dad & stepdad. Only when the nest was empty did she really press to get a full-time paying job.

The only reason I can think that someone would take all of this seriously is that it reinforces something that they desperately want to be true -- that liberals are self-involved, self-destructive, immoral, lazy, and disinterested in the future of this society.

Do I take that personally? Goddamned right I do. It's offensive to me, it's offensive to my family, it's offensive to my every experience as a human being. How else would I react, Les?

And the fact that you and your Buchanan-esque ilk keep trotting out this same loathsome, pathetic, bankrupt line of "reasoning," year upon year -- it really exhausts my patience. I find it despicable.

Calling you the living embodiment of reification really gives you much more credit than you deserve.

Les, It's because you're a big republican stupidhead. Thought that was obvious.

You want obvious?

Of course you would think it was that simple.

____________________________

On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning. --H. Thoreau

And this concludes today's

Submitted by SayUncle on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 1:37pm.

And this concludes today's lesson on the metulj school of blog commenting.

Step 1: throw out term learned on high school debate team that either 1) doesn't apply or 2) is so overly broad that it applies to everything (seriously, reification? that would make, err, all political/socioeconomic discussions pointless).

Step 2: when asked, repeat. Only this time, add insult or comment that someone is so stupid they don't understand what you mean with term learned on high school debate team.

Step 3: throw out generic and irrelevant catchphrase/insult.

Repeat as necessary.

---
SayUncle
Can't we all just get a long gun?

I wish I could post pithy

Submitted by Not A Fancy Man (not verified) on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 3:31pm.

I wish I could post pithy comments about how I am a grad student/phd/wunderkid/uber liberal fancy man living in NYC/Jersey attending Rutgers. Alas I am but a peasant without an online thesaurus. Let them eat cake.

metulj:

Submitted by Les Jones on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 2:45pm.

"This whole post plays into your idiotic post of a few months ago about how liberals are barren, etc. It's stupid and meaningless. Signed, father of soon-to-be three."

Well congrats on the impending triplets and all, but I thought with you being Dr. Science you'd understand the difference between anecdotal data and datasets. Better see about getting a tuition refund from Geographist Skool.

Hey, Les, why don't we just call each other assholes and get it over with. - Somebody on the old Southknoxbubba.net (if that was you, claim your quote and win net.fame!)

...you'd understand the

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 2:51pm.

...you'd understand the difference between anecdotal data and datasets

Try this on: A pivot table stacking marriage rates against Congressional districts and party affliliation is anecdotal. I can do that in less than one day's work in Excel using the Census Bureau and Congressional websites.

That exercise is meaningless. Just because a small sample of two numbers line up in columns doesn't prove correlation.

And even if it did, correlation is a fairly weak test of statistical significance. It's only the first slice at analysis.

Anyone presenting this at a peer review would soon see their work casually shredded.

____________________________

On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning. --H. Thoreau

Andy:

Submitted by Les Jones on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 3:05pm.

"Just because two numbers line up doesn't prove correlation."

Are you kidding me? That's the effen' definition of correlation. Admittedly USA Today didn't give a coefficient, but when the data smacks you in the face that hard it's sort of hard to ignore unless you just want to ignore it.

Incidentally, the data is even stronger when it comes to marriage:

Republicans control 49 of the 50 districts with the highest rates of married people.

Democrats represent all 50 districts that have the highest rates of adults who have never married.

Hey, Les, why don't we just call each other assholes and get it over with. - Somebody on the old Southknoxbubba.net (if that was you, claim your quote and win net.fame!)

You don't just excerpt the

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 3:13pm.

You don't just excerpt the top 5% and the bottom 5% and say, "Whoa! Correlation!"

That's called cherry-picking.

____________________________

On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning. --H. Thoreau

More on your stock-in-trade,

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 3:23pm.

More on your stock-in-trade, corroborating post hoc assumptions using spurious correlation as "evidence."

____________________________

On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning. --H. Thoreau

Andy:

Submitted by Les Jones on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 4:07pm.

"You don't just excerpt the top 5% and the bottom 5% and say, "Whoa! Correlation!" That's called cherry-picking."

First of all, for the marriage data it's the top and bottom 10%, but I'll do you one better and explain how the extrema can be the most important data.

The extremes in some cases tell you what's really happening. Example: two bird species live on a 10,000 foot mountain. At the middle elevations you find some of both species. Then as you go up you find more of Species B, and as you go down you find more species A. Below 1,000 feet you only find species A. Above 9,000 feet you only find species B.

Now it's probably not elevation per se that's causing the distribution. It's probably more likely to be temperature (because mountains have thermal clines) or habitat (the highest elevations may be devoid of the trees one species builds nests in) or food (their prey species is distributed differently). But noting the extremes in behavior at the extremes of elevation isn't "cherry-picking the data." It's drawing the logical conclusion from the data.

If you were an ornithologist and ignored the elevation distribution of the two species you'd be a bird brain. And if you were interested in politics and ignored the party affinities people show based on marriage and children you'd be... Andy Axel and metulj.

Hey, Les, why don't we just call each other assholes and get it over with. - Somebody on the old Southknoxbubba.net (if that was you, claim your quote and win net.fame!)

First of all, for the

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 5:03pm.

First of all, for the marriage data it's the top and bottom 10%, but I'll do you one better and explain how the extrema can be the most important data.

I'll do you one better and show my work:

25/435 = .0574712

.057 X 100% = 5.7%

Unless you're claiming only one significant digit, I call that 5%. 5% for the top 25, 5% for the bottom 25. Top and bottom 5%.

Now it's probably not elevation per se that's causing the distribution. It's probably more likely to be temperature (because mountains have thermal clines) or habitat (the highest elevations may be devoid of the trees one species builds nests in) or food (their prey species is distributed differently). But noting the extremes in behavior at the extremes of elevation isn't "cherry-picking the data." It's drawing the logical conclusion from the data.

But you're attempting to buttress the claim that one appears with the other. That might not be so apparent if you look at the top 50, or the top 100. It might be one giant bowl of statistical spaghetti outside of the excerpted data.

And if you were interested in politics and ignored the party affinities people show based on marriage and children you'd be...

...making a completely reasoned, germane and salient argument.

Just look at TN-7 (2nd "best") versus PA-2 (2nd "worst"). That's a portion of one Pennsylvania metro area (Philadelphia) versus largely suburban/rural Tennessee. Thanks to congressional apportionment, each district has roughly the same number of people, but the density and the demographics vary wildly among them.

What's the income breakdown of the top 25 versus the bottom 25? What are the college graduation rates? What are the racial and religious demographics? How many Fortune 500 companies are located in these respective districts? What's the median income? What's the median home value? What are the murder rates? Why do you see many more women representing the "bottom 25" districts versus the "top 25?" What's the characteristic of districts 26 - 50? 51 - 100? 101 - 150? If I were to take the middle percentile, what would it tell me about the population? How many registered voters are there? What's the deviation in the last 10 congressional cycles? What did this list look like in 1996? How about 1986? What about 1976? When was the last time each was redistricted? How many people does each district represent? Which of these populations are aging, and which ones are younger? How does this same analysis track for US senators? How many multimillionaires live in these respective districts? Why are the bottom 25 largely clustered around more urban districts in the American "north"? How much did the populations change in these districts in the last 20 years? Did they grow a lot? Did they lose a lot? What does the percentage of population married mean? Do they have larger families or smaller families? How many first marriages are there? How many divorces per hundred marriages? How much of the population is under the age of 18? How many people are past their reproductive years?

What other lurking variables might account for this phenomenon as represented by USA Today?

____________________________

On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning. --H. Thoreau

Nope

Submitted by Les Jones on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 5:14pm.

"I'll do you one better and show my work: 25/435 = .0574712 .057 X 100% = 5.7%

Unless you're claiming only one significant digit, I call that 5%. 5% for the top 25, 5% for the bottom 25. Top and bottom 5%."

That's for the numbers in the chart. Up above I quoted more information from the USA Today article:

Republicans control 49 of the 50 districts with the highest rates of married people.

Democrats represent all 50 districts that have the highest rates of adults who have never married.

So let me show my work: 50/435= 11.49%. So it's even more than the 10% I claimed. Hooray for me!

Obviously there could be lots of variables causing the trend, but if you stick your head in the sand, shoot the messenger, and ignore the trend you'll never discover what those variables are.

Hey, Les, why don't we just call each other assholes and get it over with. - Somebody on the old Southknoxbubba.net (if that was you, claim your quote and win net.fame!)

"You just used a

Submitted by Les Jones on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 9:53pm.

"You just used a distribution to explain extremes. Fascinating."

Well, like Mark Twain said, "Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious."

"Also, elevation controls temperature (6.5 degrees C per 1000 meters roughly, and therefore controls habitat and food."

Another place you need to get a tuition refund from: Reading Skool. As I mentioned above: "Now it's probably not elevation per se that's causing the distribution. It's probably more likely to be temperature (because mountains have thermal clines) or habitat (the highest elevations may be devoid of the trees one species builds nests in) or food (their prey species is distributed differently)."

Of course, I couldn't have learned a term like "thermal cline" by going to college. I probably saw it on a "Three's Company" re-run where Jack, Janet, and Chrissy went skiiing. On account of I'm so stupid compared to the awesome might of metulj's brain. Sheesh! Get over yourself, buddy.

BTW, nowhere above did I saw why the correlation discussed in the USA Today article occurred. Only that it was damned obvious that there was a correlation to anyone who didn't intentionally blind themselves to it.

Hey, Les, why don't we just call each other assholes and get it over with. - Somebody on the old Southknoxbubba.net (if that was you, claim your quote and win net.fame!)

Only that it was damned

Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 10:37pm.

Only that it was damned obvious that there was a correlation to anyone who didn't intentionally blind themselves to it.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

____________________________

On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning. --H. Thoreau

Like shooting Chickenhawks in a cage

Submitted by Factchecker on Thu, 2006/09/28 - 12:35pm.

This is a lot dumber than what I first thought it was trying to assert, when glancing at early this morning. I mistakenly thought they were studying marriage rates of Congress itself, which would be about as meaningless. But this is REALLY dopey. They might as well study the marriage rates or military service records of prominent members, pundits, etc. of each party. Heh.

P.S. I really don't like piling on, but would this be as worthy of posting by Les if it concluded the opposite?

______________________________________________

Bush cut and ran from Afghanistan

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Assumptions: The upper and

Fascinating

I'm not attacking it per se.

Andy:

Les, It's because you're a

But you ignore wide swaths

And this concludes today's

I wish I could post pithy

metulj:

...you'd understand the

Andy:

You don't just excerpt the

More on your stock-in-trade,

Andy:

First of all, for the

Nope

"You just used a

Only that it was damned

Like shooting Chickenhawks in a cage

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